(Expanded thoughts and reasonings on yesterday’s list of predictions.) It’s years like 2008 when I throw my hands up and admit (albeit with great reluctance) that my family and friends have been right for the last two decades. Carla, Tom, Kim, Auntie Mavis: I give up. I am insane to care as much as I […]

I was just listening to this NPR piece on documentary feature nominee “The Garden,” an affecting film with a gut-wrenching conclusion that I’ve already said could be in the thick of the hunt for an upset with literally all the other contenders. But what really caught my eye was this comment on the NPR page: […]

It often seems that when there isn’t an obvious, populist pick in the Academy’s documentary feature category (such as “Bowling for Columbine,” “March of the Penguins” or “An Inconvenient Truth”), the field is rife for an upset. Last year a number of awards watchers were sure that either “No End in Sight” or “Sicko” would […]

… and 11 of them (count ’em) are from “High School Musical 3: Senior Year.” That’s over a fifth of the contenders, so I’m guessing the folks at Disney will be pretty mortified if at least one of them doesn’t make the final five. And hell, one of them should. I’m not too snobbish to […]

“Frozen River” is really turning into one of the surprise packages of this admittedly young awards season. Just yesterday it had a superb showing in yesterday’s Independent Spirit nominations, where it beat the more hotly fancied likes of “The Visitor” to a Best Picture nomination, only two days after landing an unexpected nod in the […]

Whenever an awards shortlist is announced, people will inevitably spend as much time, if not more, pondering its omissions as they will its inclusions. And so it has been this week, in the wake of the Academy’s announcement of the 15 titles shortlisted for Best Feature Documentary. Some are curiously kvetching that Bill Maher’s sporadically […]

The Gotham Independent Film Award nominees have been announced (note the change in moniker this year), and Lance Hammer’s Mississippi drama “Ballast” leads the pack with four nominations. Six films received two nominations apiece, including Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York,” Jonathan Demme’s “Rachel Getting Married” and Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” One film that might […]